Motorola (NYSE:MOT) was a winner in the latest round of broadband stimulus grants and loans funding. The vendor received a $50.6 million award to build its previously announced public-safety LTE network in San Francisco in the 700 MHz band.
The network will cover 10 sites in multiple counties in the Bay Area, and is part of the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System (BayRICS) plan. The network will cover San Francisco, Alameda County/Oakland, Contra Costa County, as well as the cities of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. The FCC in May granted a conditional waiver to San Francisco to begin building a public-safety LTE system. Motorola has said the system will be installed this year, and is expected to be running in early 2011.
In April, Motorola, along with public-safety agencies and broadband providers in the San Francisco Bay, sought $50.6 million in the second round of broadband stimulus funding to build an LTE network that would expand broadband services for first responders and serve residential and business customers.
Another winner of a broadband stimulus award was Windstream, which received $64.3 million for rural broadband deployments in Georgia, Kentucky and new York. Hughes Network Systems received almost $59 million for it satellite-broadband service.
The federal government has announced 94 grants for projects in 37 states. The Commerce Department still has about $1 billion in funding to hand out by the end of September while the Department of Agriculture has $500 million left in funds.
For more:
- see this WSJ article
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